Review by Gotsoccer12 -- The Expelled by Mois Benarroch
Mois Benarroch’s The Expelled does not immediately lend itself to summary. This is in large part due to its telling of multiple stories, inside of a story, inside of the story. If that sounds complicated or confusing, that’s because it is, but do not write The Expelled off yet. They are, after all, pretty interesting stories.
The book opens with our narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the book, on the way home from Tel Aviv via train. He is headed home to Jerusalem and his estranged wife, who he may or may not want to divorce him. We learn that their marital problems stem at least in part from his career as a struggling writer. She grudgingly supports him financially as he pursues his writing, oscillating between wanting to be published more and wanting to remain obscure. If you are wondering why any author might prefer obscurity to fame, the answer is in the book.
Our protagonist arrives at the station, where he is astonished to catch a glimpse of a woman who is the mirror image of his wife 20 years earlier. He strikes up a conversation with the woman who turns out to actually be his wife, Gabrielle, 20 years earlier. He quickly begins an affair with the younger version of his wife because wouldn’t you? If you are dying to know how that one ends, read the book.
One afternoon, our nameless narrator spends his time with young Gabrielle reading, at her request, one of his stories. It is a recent work that is as of yet unpublished and unnamed, maybe not even done; or at least that is what he tells Gabrielle as he begins to read. The story centers around the interrogation of multiple people whose only relation is that they were passengers on a bus travelling across Northern Africa from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. During the account, we learn that the passengers on this bus have already begun self-segregating as “front people” and “back people” when someone is shot and killed. No one knows who has committed this crime and the confusion and fear further cement the lines of segregation. People sitting in the front are identified as good and trustworthy and those sitting in the back as bad and dangerous. Stranger and stranger things begin happening on the bus but everyone takes these things in stride as if there was nothing very odd about them at all. Eventually the bus is involved in a crash and our poor passengers regain consciousness in the interrogation facility. Think magical realism meets the socio-political atmosphere of Israel.
All together, I would give The Expelled 3 out of 4 stars. I ranked it highly because Mois Benarroch has an easy voice that makes it interesting and enjoyable to read. Both the humorous and the painful events and realizations of the book are so palpable that much like Benarroch’s characters, the reader feels a bit lost in the whirlwind of stories stirring through the book. Whether you think this is a good thing or not is up to you. I likened it to the experience of reading Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which for me was somewhat infuriating until I realized that the absurdity of the writing mimicked the absurdity of the characters’ experiences specifically and of war generally. In other words, The Expelled is a lot to swallow and a little bit confusing, but so is the subject matter that it is addressing.
I felt I could not give The Expelled a 4th star for two reasons. The first is that I felt like some prior knowledge was necessary to follow Benarroch’s line of thought. Totally by chance, I have studied the region in which it is set (the Middle East/North Africa) and felt fairly comfortable with the historical and political allusions that are so central to the story. I knew what to look up if I wanted to know more and I could immediately recognize the story of the bus for the allegory it was. I wonder if people without any prior knowledge would be able to navigate the book and if they would find the story compelling enough to keep reading if they didn't. The second reason I did not give it a 4, is that I felt very unfulfilled by the book’s ending. I was not expecting a happy ending or even for all mysteries to be solved, since that is not how such a story would really end, but the ending felt abrupt and forced. I felt cut short and like there had been no real change. Perhaps this was intentional on the part of the author, but I, for one, want characters that grow and change.
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The Expelled
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